


i couldn't keep my head above water (i took a final gasp of air)

by smallzita



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst, Drowning, Execution, Hurt No Comfort, Hybrid Ranboo (Video Blogging RPF), Manipulative Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Ranboo and Niki Are Sibilings, Ranboo-centric (Video Blogging RPF), Temporary Character Death, nothing good happens during festivals, possesed! Alexis | Quackity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28611147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallzita/pseuds/smallzita
Summary: What if Quackity found the memory book instead of Dream? What if executions became a L'manbur festival tradition?A.K.A I really thought the Festival was going a whole different direction so I decided to write what I thought was going to go down.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 299





	i couldn't keep my head above water (i took a final gasp of air)

**Author's Note:**

> I felt like I was drowning, so Ranboo did too.
> 
> (This is half a vent fic, if Ramboo or anyone else stumbles upon this please know I do this to all my comfort characters)

Everything is blurry.

Ranboo thinks he’s crying but he can’t be sure, his eyes burning with the same intensity as his lungs, he makes the mistake of looking up as he bangs his fists desperately against the glass, green blood starting to stain the water around him mixing with the black ink of the pages dumped in the water alongside him. Everyone is just _staring_ at him, looking at him like he’s some kind of circus attraction, some kind of monster in a cage suffering for their amusement and it feels so familiar, so awfully _awfully_ familiar that it makes his skin crawl.

No, that’s not the only reason, his body painfully reminds him, his molecules shifting and changing and _twisting_ under the weight of the freezing water, his primal instincts shouting at him, telling him to leave, to move _,_ to just teleport away, just a few inches and he’d be _out, out of the water, out of his cage, away from everyone who ever hurt him, free, free and happy and-_

But he can’t, he knows he can’t even if his body continues to try despite the damage it’s doing to itself; his enderman blood (the same one floating around him from the wound in his hand from hitting the glass over and over, the same one pooling on his mouth from his organs being torn apart and rearranged again and again) only making him suffer like it does time and time again. He's a monster in every way that counts but the ones that could save his life. 

A page from his memory book sinks to the bottom of the tank past his field of vision, the smudged drawing of his own making, picturing a grinning young woman making itself seen. Ranboo tries to find her in the crowd of onlookers only to see that she is no longer grinning. No, his sister is knelt on the ground, her hand outstretched towards him and mouth open as she screams, a familiar man with fox ears has his arms wrapped around her but from where he is Ramboo can’t tell if he’s trying to hold her down, comfort her, or both. It makes the boy's heart break, Niki has alway been there for him, always looking out for her fucked up baby brother even when it was dangerous for her to do so, she didn’t deserve to watch him, she shouldn’t have to watch him die just because he was too spineless to be what the government, what his _friends_ wanted him to be.

He puts his hand against the glass and, despite the pain, tries to shoot a reassuring look her way. It quickly vanishes when Quackity moves in front of the tank, making Ranboo’s body once more try to panic teleport away, much to the man’s apparent amusement. He tries to move away as far as he can from the glass but his back is already hitting a wall and when he looks back at Quackity he’s speaking, the half enderman can’t hear what he’s saying because of the water and the blood rushing through his ears, but he’s pretty sure he knows what’s being said anyways.

_Traitor. Monster. Weak. Exiled._

Quackity has already said all those things to him, to Tubbo, to everyone right before he pushed him inside the tank.

He just doesn’t remember his eyes being quite so red when he did so.

In his despair, Ranboo searches for Tubbo, childish hope and desperation gripping his heart like it had done when Quackity first pulled out his diary out of his pocket and revealed to the town and everyone in it of his sins, then it had been for forgiveness, a hopeless plea for him to understand, for him to know he didn’t mean to hurt anyone, but now that any semblance of repentance seems to be unachievable he looks at the other boy searching for mercy, begging silently to be free from his see-through grave.

But Tubbo never meets his gaze, not when Quackity had pushed Tubbo in the water, and certainly not as he drowns in front of a nation he barely got to call a home.

He doesn’t try to bang on the glass anymore, his arms hanging aimlessly at his side as his shifts his eyes to the bottom of his soon-to-be coffin, wishing, hoping he could just close his eyes so he wouldn’t be forced to see his monstrous form, always shifting, always hurting, floating next to the bitter evidence of his crimes. He looks down and tries to count how many friends he has left at his side.

Then Ranboo breaths in.

* * *

When he wakes up again, he does so hacking and coughing up a storm, water dripping past his chin despite his back hitting soft warm grass beneath him, there are tear tracks staining his cheeks too and his lungs have yet to recover from the feeling of burning that consumed them as he drowned. It takes him a few minutes to remember how to breathe, his body barely strong enough to let him sit up as he tries to get his bearings.

“Are you okay?”Asks a voice behind him, and the shock is so hard he starts coughing once more. It takes a few moments for him to recover, and when he does he turns around to see a masked man clad in glowing armour staring down at him, it makes Ramboo go tense, his whole body becoming guarded as his mind screams at him to run, to get away from the danger. The boy frowns, trying to remember what someone could have done to warrant this reaction from him; he wasn’t at the festival, Ranboo vaguely recalls, no one in there looked nothing like him and they were the ones to hurt him-to _kill_ him and yet he didn’t feel this strongly about any of them, why was it so different with this stranger?

Maybe it was just a leftover response from his execution, he rationalizes, desperate to make sense of his own jumbled mind, yes that made sense, he must be paranoid, still reeling from all that happened.

“Did you hear me?” The man asks again, crouching down so he’s on eye level with Ranboo who nods.

“Yes, yes. I mean, yes, I heard you I just kinda-I got lost in my thoughts?” He offers, blinking to try and dipersate the fogness away from his mind. It doesn’t work. “But no, I’m not-I don’t think I’m okay.”

The man hums and tilts his head to the side, and, despite being unable to see his eyes, Ranboo feels like he’s being carefully analyzed, like a butterfly trapped in a frame. “Yeah, you certainly don’t look like you are okay.” The man offers, his tone is lighthearted but it doesn’t really feel like a joke, still Ranboo huffs a small laugh to not seem rude. Thunder claps above them, and the boy can’t help but flinch violently at it, his eyes widening in pure unadulterated fear as he sees that big heavy storm clouds have formed above the two. The masked man follows his gaze lazily, as if the half ender’s reaction is boring him. “Oh, right. I imagine your kind isn’t very fond of rain.”

Ranboo just nods, unsure how to answer that when the feeling of water is still burning the back of his throat. The man sighs and undoes the bindings on his bright green cape and drapes it around the boy’s shoulders. “Here, this will keep you dry until we reach somewhere with a roof.” He explains, very matter of factly as he picks himself up, not bothering to help Ramboo up. “I know a place.”

“I-I don’t even know your name?” Ranboo says, confusion in his face as he stares at the stranger who is already walking away, he sighs.

“Dream.” He says simply, and Ranboo feels a shiver go down his spine, dread pooling in his stomach. He doesn’t like Dream, or...he thinks he doesn’t but why wouldn’t he like Dream? Dream who gave him his cape, who asked him if he was okay, who is currently looking down at him with his arms crossed in front of his chest. “Are you coming?”

Ranboo looks at the masked man before instinctively looking behind his own shoulder. There is a town in the distance, he can see towers, and lanterns, and a balloon that floats above it all; it looks happy,peaceful, and a part of him wants to walk over there and see what the fuss is about, but the thought of it alone is enough to make his stomach curl and his head scream and he doesn’t know why, _why can’t he remember, why does it hurt, how did he even get here in the first place._

It hurts less to look at Dream, he realizes suddenly, Dream feels much safer than that town with its pretty colors and decorations, so he follows him.

And he doesn’t stop.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> If you stumbled onto this fic while waiting for my other fic to update just know that it might be a while for that to happen, things are pretty tough rn but I really appreciate all the suport people have been showing me. Also please let me know if I missed any tags
> 
> Edit: I wrote this whole ass fic writing the man's name wrong and still tagged him wrong. Its corrected now but I am a whole dumb of ass., and I guess autocorrect always writing it as Rambo fucked w me


End file.
